Flat Surface Syndrome

[brightspark]

I've worked in houses like that

View attachment 252362
Can I play? Spot the free horizontal surface even the press has a tube of exhaust paste on. This has since been tidied (a bit) and I can now walk from one end to the other without having to step over anything. Amazing how fast things go to pot when your not constantly tidying!

ohh dear silverline spanners

 

[Screwdriver]

View attachment 252362
Can I play? Spot the free horizontal surface even the press has a tube of exhaust paste on. This has since been tidied (a bit) and I can now walk from one end to the other without having to step over anything. Amazing how fast things go to pot when your not constantly tidying!

Pah. Amateurs. Let me show you what a proper mess looks like (when I can get in there).

It's not just physically difficult to get in, it is mentally disturbing too. I need to brace myself...

 

[chrisg3103]

ohh dear silverline spanners

They matched the cheap blue theme of the press and blaster
actually not been too bad...

 

[sako243]

Guessing this isn't in keeping with the thread, I have a flat surface...

But then it'll have to stay like this because this is happening

 

[Other Daniel]

Always with the difficult questions...

Following that logic; I need to make my workshop dirty

 

[Ashley Burton]

I call it organised chaos

 

[imagedude]

Men file horizontaly, women prefer a more vertical storage system. True.

 

[gaz1]

I think you lot are rediculous all that room and such a mess

whilst i have very little room like many more and we have to move gear often to either use gear of move out of the shed before we can start

and yours is such a bomb site makes mine like loverly except for the op hes cheated

 

[brightspark]

the bigger the aeria the more crap you hoard and the less you tidy up till your down to your last few feet to move around

 

[optima21]

me cheating, I dont know what you mean......my house used to be a 3 bedroom semi, now its got at workshop and two storage rooms , and the ground floor rooms in my house have concrete floors so I could put some patio doors on the front of the house so it makes it easy to bring in a big lathe and milling machine..

 

[Ashley Burton]

@brightspark Definitely agree on that one!

I'm going to have another sort through my storage unit when I get back & downsize it

 

[gaz1]

me cheating, I dont know what you mean......my house used to be a 3 bedroom semi, now its got at workshop and two storage rooms , and the ground floor rooms in my house have concrete floors so I could put some patio doors on the front of the house so it makes it easy to bring in a big lathe and milling machine..

and
another and

 

[brewdexta]

I ran out of flat surfaces today and couldn't get to my router table so did a bit tidying up. This mainly involved piling stuff higher on other flat surfaces.

Before

After

Didn't stay like that for long though......

 

[Maker]

does it not take you ages to find things

The problem I had wasn't finding things but shoving everything out the way in order to do anything. Why would you build a 600mm deep bench just to work at the first four inches. I used to be really bad for it but I've sorted it out now, the solution is proper organisation, everything has a place and critically, that place is easy to get to. Everything (With the exception of tools I almost never use) can be got to with one "action", opening a drawer or lifting off a hook for example. If something lives, say, in a cantilever toolbox, under a bench, behind a bottle of oil, etc, there's too much moving, lifting, opening and rummaging to get to it and it becomes too much effort to put it back, especially if you know you're gonna need it again soon.

 

[ukracer]

To treat symptoms:

Get into the habit of clearing up your scrow, every time
If you do it every time, then after a while you won't abide seeing stuff laid about.

Having said that, I have several linbins on my workbench for all the random bits to pile into... keep things tidy and hide the mess

Does this not rely on you having a place to put everything away?

 

[Wightsparks]

everything has a place and critically, that place is easy to get to.

This.
Also it's guaranteed that something will not have a place so I have a SWAH box - err "Stuff Without A Home". So all SWAH goes in that rather than getting left lying around.

 

[Maker]

Stuff without a home is found a home sharpish, it's usually the shed or the bin.

 

[cheb]

As has been said, organisation is necessary. I get as much pleasure from organising as I do from making/repairing things.

 

[chrisg3103]

5S - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5S_(methodology) is actually quite a handy way to think, in my last workplace i grew to despise it due to the way it was implemented by the '5S police' during the bad times when everything in sight was being red tagged groups of resistance fighters popped up to save our valuable custom tools, the kind of thing that's used once in a blue moon but invaluable when its needed? in their rules if its not got an immediate use its going in the bin, had to hide them in lockers and drawers. tens of thousands of pounds of tools and parts binned
To be fair i did get a lot of stuff from the scrap bin before i left and since leaving i have come to see the sense of 5S

 

[stuvy]

I have 3 tool boxes, 2 cantilever boxes courtesy of @eLuSiVeMiTe and a snap on roll cab plus a side cabinet and two top boxes

I know where every single tool I own lives and the lowest draw is for my grinders if I’m away for a few days get put back in there

hammers and dollies that don’t get used very often are in one of the boxes whereas screwdrivers probably one of the most used tools are in the top draw for easy access

I buy tools almost every week so have to have a reshuffle now and again